North Carolina car accident reporting is often confounded by too much reliance on bad statistics and hasty conclusions. We live in a “we need more content, stat 24/7” society, and the web is notoriously littered with flagrant marketing pitches disguised as legitimate information.

With so many seemingly useful channels of input coming into your world, how can you know whom to trust? How can you gain clarity? In other words, how do you know when you’re “doing enough” to take care of your problem? How do you know when you need to find more resources, do more research, or just generate more ideas about how to solve a particular problem?

Exposed to lot of information, but not trained effectively for how to use it

As children, we were taught basic rules of learning. We were taught to read, to write, and hopefully, to think critically. But we grew up – or at least most of us grew up – in an era before the web invaded every aspect of our life, education, and culture. As a result, we have certain skills that are essentially useless: who needs to memorize historical dates anymore, when you can find out that trivia instantly using your cell phone?

Meanwhile, we are lacking in certain skills that are essential for navigating the modern web. How do we organize different inputs? How do we prioritize? How do we time manage effectively? How do we discern truth from fiction? How do we know which “authorities” to trust, when, and on what subjects? There are strategies and tactics for dealing with these questions, but almost no one learns them in school. We are forced to find them, ad hoc, as we become adults. And this can be difficult when you are facing challenges with respect to a North Carolina car accident or workers’ compensation claim or any other problem.

After all, if you are just trying to figure out who won the World Series in 1984 (The Tigers) or how to clean your garage in ten easy steps, the web makes it ridiculously easy for you. If you are trying to deal with a more complex topic, the web can help, but it can also hinder. Answers to complex problems require expertise in many domains – and they also require a kind of integrated sense of the problem. But you need people to help you navigate this information, not just information itself.

The team here at the law offices of Michael DeMayo is keenly aware of the challenges and struggles that accident victims face. We can help you regain some clarity and a sense of control not only by giving you powerful legal representation but also by helping you in other aspects of your case and your life. After all, you are not just your case – you are an integrated person with integrated needs. Yes, you want compensation and justice. But even more than that, you want clarity, and you want to regain a sense of control. Let us help you.

More Web Resources:

Information alone is not enough

Why people matter

How much thought have you given to avoiding North Carolina car accidents?

If you or someone you love was recently involved in an auto accident, you are probably spending quite a bit of time ruminating over what happened and what went wrong.

Here’s a counterintuitive thought for you: whether there has been an accident in your life recently or not, you are probably not thinking about the future enough!

Here’s why. The reality is that you can’t change the past – you can only impact the present and the potential future.

As this blog has discussed on many occasions, North Carolina auto accident prevention should be on the top of everyone’s list – agencies, insurance companies, businesses, and individual drivers – especially drivers who have recently been hurt or suffered damage.

We all know the standard safety messages: wear your safety belt, don’t drive DUI, don’t yap on your cell phone while behind the wheel, etc. But even those of us who do pay attention to these basic safety guidelines struggle with identifying potentially “out of the box” ideas for accident reduction/prevention.

There are some good clues out there, however, if you bother to look. For instance, accidents don’t happen at random times. There are certain times when it’s far more dangerous to drive – and certain times when it’s relatively safer to get behind the wheel. Some of the most dangerous times to drive include:

•    Friday and Saturday nights
•    National holidays (such as the Super Bowl, 4th of July, Labor Day weekend, Memorial Day weekend, New Year’s Eve, Halloween, etc.)
•    Different roads and highways may have different “danger times” – if you drive on a particular road or highway frequently (i.e. every day), you might want to talk to local law enforcement officers about when that particular road is the most dangerous – and where along that road is the most dangerous.

In other words, there is a tremendous amount of information out there – about specific roads that can be dangerous or about times at which certain roads became dangerous. Pay attention to those statistics and then using them to guide your driving decisions.

Putting Theory into Practice

Say you do a little homework and learn that, on your road to work, you pass one curve where there have been seven accidents in the past five years. It’s a dangerous curve – due to sight line problems, road engineering, or whatever. Once you know this information, you can change your behavior accordingly. For instance, you might find a way to bypass that particular intersection. Or you might just make a note to yourself to pay extra attention whenever you come to that curve – give your driving your full attention and then some when you reach that point.

Alternatively, maybe you can make a conscious decision to avoid driving on Friday and Saturday nights, when the young drunk crowd is out on the roads. Subtle choices like these won’t necessarily save your life. But they could reduce your likelihood of getting involved in a crash, especially over the long-term.

If you need help getting compensation or justice with respect to a car crash, connect immediately with a North Carolina auto accident law firm.

More Web Resources:

The Most Dangerous Times to Drive

Are Some Roads More Dangerous Than Others?

North Carolina truck accidents can be devastating – far more so than typical auto or motorcycle accidents – due to the sheer size of the vehicles involved and the force differentials.

An 18-wheeler going up against a standard Sedan is in many ways the equivalent of a battle between David and Goliath… in which David inconveniently forgets his sling shot!

So what can you do to protect yourself and your family from dangerous encounters with big rigs and other scary vehicles? Here are two interesting concepts that can be food for thought – ideas that have not been necessarily explored at length on the internet.

1. Buy a bigger car or truck!

Car and truck accidents in North Carolina and beyond are dangerous because, during an accident, the force of the collision indirectly creates forces on your body, which causes injury. This is obvious enough. But the implication is very interesting. If you have two vehicles that are mismatched with respect to their masses, the larger massed vehicle will almost always “win” the fight. Not always but the odds are for it. So if you have a massive 18-wheel truck against a Honda Civic, the Civic is going to be the underdog. And the statistics bear this out. In a collision between trucks and lighter vehicles, the truck drivers often (not always, but often) come out more okay than do the auto drivers or auto passengers. By getting a larger vehicle with more mass, you, at least theoretically, might be at less of a physical disadvantage in an encounter with a truck.

2. Strategically reduce how much driving you do overall – particularly with respect to how much driving you do around trucks.

How much time do you spend really analyzing your driving behavior and patterns and proclivities? Do you keep a driving journal? Do you do this once a month, once a year? Have you ever done it? Most people have never ever thought to think about their driving!

But as the great management thinker, Peter Drucker, once said, what gets measured gets managed. If you don’t know when you might be at most risk for a collision — which highways that you take are the most dangerous, etc. — how can you know when you are most at risk? The answer is you can’t! Unless you track your driving habits.

So make a science out of it. You might think that it’s not worth your while. But consider that some statistics say that as many as 1 out of every 15 Americans will be involved in a serious car accident at some point in their lives. 40,000 people die every year on the U.S. roads. This is a very real and present issue. It’s worth your time to think about your driving habits.

Of course, there is always a degree of randomness and even unfairness when it comes to accidents. That’s why it’s important to protect your rights as quickly as possible after an event by calling a North Carolina truck accident law firm and getting good, actionable, advice from seasoned professionals.

More web resources:

Keeping a journal about your driving habits

What gets measured get managed

Whether you sustained a major injury in a North Carolina car crash, or you just suffered some fender bender type damage and emotional shock after getting rear-ended by a truck at a traffic light, you’re trying to come up with an appropriate way to process what you’ve been through.

This is difficult because, even if your friends and family members are sympathetic and if you have resources on your side like a competent North Carolina car crash law firm, the experience of being a victim can be incredibly isolating and terrifying. When we don’t process the accident correctly, from an emotional point of view, we can find ourselves hemmed in by our own irrational fears for months or even years after the disaster.

For instance, you might find yourself remarkably and paralyzingly afraid of getting behind the wheel again. The trauma of the accident is just too fresh and potent. On an intellectual level, you’d like to conquer this fear and get back out there. After all, you have a job to do, bills to pay, people to see, and errands to run. But on an emotional level, you’re having a very difficult time conceptualizing your limitations and getting beyond them. Maybe you’ve even tried things like hypnotherapy, talking therapy, cognitive behavioral approaches, etc to some effect.

Step one to dealing with fears like this is to acknowledge the extent and scope of the problem – as well as the limits that this problem are putting on your life. Be compassionate with yourself. Sure, you may suffer through thoughts to the effect “I’m so stupid, why am I so scared of something as silly as the prospect of driving to a 7-11?”

Fears like this – which may seem silly or irrational to others or even to yourself — often stem from far deeper and more complicated root causes. Just knowing that your accident was somehow involved won’t necessarily make the problem go away, either. You need to put attention on the problem and potentially try out various therapies and modalities to restore some balance and equilibrium in your life.

You may also need time. We live in a world in which we expect results instantly – not only from ourselves but also from our therapists and doctors and lawyers. But the reality is that, in some situations, you may need to invest a lot of time and energy just to make a problem go away. In some cases, success may not even be fully possible! In other words, it is at least conceivable that you may be afraid of driving for the reminder of your days. To reconcile with all this, you need to start to think about various ways you can reengineer your life.

For instance, you could try to make your driving fears less debilitating. You could also think about alternative tactics to use in your life to compensate. For instance, maybe your spouse could take care of all highway driving from here on out. Or maybe you could do more business and shopping online to avoid traveling via car. Or maybe you could take the bus to work or car pool.

In other words, your strategy could be a two-front approach:

1) Work on the fear itself. Find its root cause, and see what you can do to get over it or make it less debilitating.

2) Develop workarounds in your life to make things easier and less complicated for you.

More Web Resources:

The Fear of Driving

Getting Over Phobias

The North Carolina car accident prevention experts may be a little too boxed in and wanting for creativity. We typically think about auto safety prevention only in terms of the conventional wisdom about it – that people need to wear seatbelts more often, that drivers need to drive slower, that drivers need to stop text messaging and driving DUI, that roads need to be better built, that car parts need to be more durable and regularly inspected, etc.

There is nothing wrong with these conventional ideas about auto safety – provided that we subject them to rigorous scientific tests and make rational actions based on the data that we collect. But it’s very easy in the world of science and auto accident prevention to make logical errors that can redound to lead to more injuries/deaths… as well as lot of wasted time and opportunity. For instance, as intrepid researcher Tom Vanderbilt argued in his book, Traffic, the wide adoption of air bags should have led to a significant across the board decrease in injuries. But it didn’t. Vanderbilt theorizes that drivers who bought safer cars took extra liberties – drove a little bit faster, followed other cars a little more closely – because they felt safer. This slightly more reckless driving offset the safety related improvements.

The moral is: We need to be very, very careful when it comes to how we think about North Carolina car accident prevention. Along those lines, it certainly wouldn’t hurt us to theorize about “out of the box” solutions for car accident safety, such as:

•    Why not mandate that automobile drivers and passengers alike wear helmets for extra protection against head injury?
•    Why not publicly humiliate randomly selected “jerk drivers” to dissuade other would-be “jerks” out there from doings things like weaving across four lanes of traffic in one turn without even using a turn signal?
•    Why not conduct rigorous experiments to test which highway speed limits lead to the least fatalities and most driver satisfaction?
•    Why not experiment with an education campaign to encourage drivers to eliminate not just some distractions (e.g. cell phone conversations) but all distractions in the vehicle — such as conversations, listening to the radio, etc – to see whether a completely “distraction free” environment would enhance safety and driver focus?

These are obviously just speculative strategies. But it is important to think outside of the normal conventional ways of thinking about auto safety, if we want to really make major progress in reducing the terrifying numbers, such as the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration statistic that 40,000 Americans die every year in auto crashes.
For help dealing with a specific accident, connect with North Carolina car crash law firm today.

More Web Resources:

Summary of Tom Vanderbilt’s Traffic

Out of the Box Safety Ideas

According to journalist and traffic research specialist, Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic, one major cause of car accidents in North Carolina and elsewhere is our inability to appreciate the “humanness” of other drivers in the road.

Vanderbilt’s idea appeals, intuitively. It’s true: we often DO behave on the road in ways that we would never behave in real life. Imagine if someone accidentally stepped in front of you in line at the supermarket. Would you scream at them and try to push them out of the way? Not unless you had a serious psychological problem. Yet we often engage in just that kind of that behavior on the freeway. Imagine someone cutting in front of you at an exit ramp. You might feel no compunction blasting your horn and even yelling epithets out the window at the person.

This breakdown of driving decorum could be rooted in evolutionary psychology.

Prior to the advent of modern transportation, people had to deal with one another on normal human speeds. Even when people rode horses or other animals, you at least see the other riders and recognize them as human. But when you see someone tooling around in a Hummer, all you see is the Hummer: you completely miss the person inside the vehicle!

Since we did not evolve to coexist with fast moving, large, potentially lethal objects (e.g. cars, buses, motorcycles, vans, etc), we have a very difficult time emotionally grasping that these vehicles actually contain people inside them who are vulnerable like we are. Our reptile brains just see threatening monster-like automatons.

How do we get around this “can’t see the humanness in other drivers” problem?

You obviously can’t change the world by yourself. But you can influence your own behavior. The next time you’re out on the road, and someone cuts you off or does something that’s untoward, instead of reacting mindlessly with rage and hostility, take a breath. Try to understand the feelings and needs of the person inside that vehicle. You can still be angry, of course. But recognize both your own humanity – including your vulnerabilities – and the humanity of the other driver. You might find yourself surprisingly resourceful and calm in moments where you might otherwise panic and resort to desperate measures.

For help dealing with the consequences of an auto accident, connect with a car accident law firm in North Carolina. Find out how you might be able to get justice and obtain appropriate compensation for your medical bills, lost time at work, injuries, and so forth.

More Web Resources:

The Thesis of Tom Vanderbilt’s Traffic

Seeing the Humanness in Other Drivers

Why do car, truck, motorcycle accidents happen in North Carolina – or elsewhere?

This is a pretty simple, straightforward question. So you’d think it would have a pretty simple, straightforward answer. Indeed, if you Google a question like this or spend some time thinking about it or talk to safety experts about it, you’ll get the standard “obvious” answers, such as:

•    The roads are poorly designed or engineered or kept up;
•    Drivers misbehave by driving while under the influence, while distracted, while fatigued, etc;
•    Cars, trucks, motorcycles malfunction due to poor maintenance or spontaneous part failure;
•    Acts of god (thunderstorms, lightening strikes, trees being blown into the road in inopportune times, earthquakes, etc.) are responsible.
•    Etc.

These are the more “obvious” causes of North Carolina car accidents. These findings can be helpful. They can tell us that why certain types of vehicles are safer, help engineers develop better components and equipment, and even teach police officers best practices.

However, we’re certainly overlooking critical factors that could make very subtle, but very critical contributions to North Carolina car crashes. These subtle events are often so far removed – so distant, in time and space – from car crashes themselves that we don’t pay much attention to them. But they are there. And if we could find and address these deep root causes, we could make serious inroads into our automotive safety goals.

For instance, consider the problems posed by the North Carolina obesity epidemic. When you are overweight or obese, you are naturally at higher risk for many other diseases, ranging from type II diabetes to Alzheimer’s to cancer. As a result of the obesity as well as associated conditions, you may feel more fatigued, “mentally cloudy” and weak physically. On top of that, you may need to take certain medications to normalize your blood sugar and treat other side effects. These medications can, in turn, have their own negative effects on driving performance. At the end of the day, we know that drivers who drive fatigued or ill or “mentally cloudy” are at higher risk for causing car crashes. So obesity — and the diseases associated with it — almost certainly causes or contributes to many car crashes, if only in a subtle, very indirect way.

All this is to say that, if we can figure out a way to treat obesity and overweight – we might be able to “knock out” one major source of driver error, negligence, fatigue, bad temperament, etc. Consider this thought experiment. Imagine if every North Carolinian lost 20 pounds of excess fat and had more energy and needed fewer medications. Imagine how those North Carolinians would behave behind the wheel – would they be safer or less safe than their formerly overweight selves?

It’s an interesting thought experiment. To deal with a car crash crisis in your life, connect with a thoughtful, experienced North Carolina auto accident law firm.

More Web Resources:

Finding the Secondary, Tertiary, and Quaternary Causes

What Would the Cure to Obesity Mean?

The recently concluded Daytona 500 was one of the strangest and fire-plagued NASCAR races in recent memory; what can recently hurt North Carolina car accident victims learn from the carnage?

First, let’s recap a few interesting things that happened over the 36 hours of the NASCAR event:

•    Crazy fuel fire stopped the race for two hours;
•    Safety truck crash ignited a massive explosion near Turn 3 of the Speedway. (200 gallons of kerosene caught fire, fueling a blaze. Pictures of this went viral and caught the world’s attention);
•    Racing babe Danica Patrick and five others got hurt during a collision between Jimmy Johnson and Elliot Sadler;
•    Overtime races won by many virtual unknowns;
•    2012 Daytona 500 was the first Daytona to be postponed in 54 events.

Big Lesson: Dangers Can Surprise Us, Even in Highly Controlled Environments

A typical driver might think that Daytona 500 Speedway is a dangerous place to be. And that’s certainly correct, if you don’t know what you’re doing. But be aware that race car drivers are some of the most highly trained drivers in the world. They use the most state-of-the-art automobiles, equipped with the best safety features known to man. The track is also continuously inspected and groomed. No one (save perhaps a few sadistic fans) wants to see fireballs. They just want to see good racing and safe racing.

But these accidents, mishaps and “hiccups” occurred in spite of everyone’s best preparation and care. The takeaway here, for North Carolina car accident victims, is that driving is — in some sense — inherently dangerous and unpredictable. You might have the safest car on the road. You might drive defensively. You might reduce your driving mileage. You might avoid driving when you feel tired, overmedicated, or angry. You could do everything right, in other words, and STILL encounter danger. An auto component could break downs. A traffic light could malfunction. Preparation may be critical (as the Boy Scouts often remind us). But preparation is not a cureall or prevent-all. It’s a way to improve your odds and reduce risks. But life is inherently risky. And driving, perhaps particularly so.

The Solution, If You Have Been Hurt In Car Crash?

A North Carolina car accident law firm can help you understand exactly what went wrong with your crash by investigating the scene. Get concrete and strategic suggestions about what to do to get the compensation you deserve for your medical bills and other costs. Make sure that the driver or other person or company who caused the accident gets held to justice.

More Web Resources:

A wrap-up of the 2012 Daytona 500

The Inherent Risks of Driving

It was a Valentine’s Day North Carolina car accident/police chase that left hearts pounding across the state.

According to North Carolina Highway Patrol reports, 35-year old Steven Earl Purnell was stopped on the 1900 block of Poole Road in Garner. It seemed like a routine stop. The officer on the scene checked out Purnell’s record and found that he had outstanding warrants for speeding and driving with a revoked license. The officer prepared to place Purnell under arrest. But… the driver did not cooperate! Instead, he threw his car into reverse and backed up, pinning the officer against the driver’s side door. Purnell took off. (Fortunately, the officer escaped serious injury.)

As the suspect fled, the police began a pursuit on Interstate 40 east. Raleigh police eventually stopped involvement and handed things over to Garner police, who took over the pursuit around marker 308 on I-40. At some point shortly after this transition, Purnell’s car blew a tire and crashed. It’s unclear why the tire blew out – did the police lay anti-tire strips on the section of road, or did the tire give out because of the stress of the chase? From the early news reports from places like NBC 17, it’s impossible to tell.

What lessons can be learned from this Valentine’s Day North Carolina car accident?

Here are three:

1. Scared, threatened drivers often panic and make dangerous decision after dangerous decision.

These misjudgments can imperil not just their own safety, but also the safety of everyone else on North Carolina roads.

2. Seemingly minor, mundane events can spontaneously and unexpectedly escalate into serious misadventures.

The police officer who stopped Purnell probably had no idea that the suspect would react so wildly. What started out as a non-newsworthy situation rapidly escalated into a massive police chase that could have ended much more tragically. Fortunately, no fatalities were reported, although Purnell did get taken to WakeMed with injuries.

3. If you were hurt in an accident, get help sooner than later.

An experienced North Carolina car accident law firm, for instance, can help you unravel who might be responsible for your suffering and vehicle damage and advise you about how to get compensation, justice, and the best rehabilitation.

More Web Resources:

A Police Chase Ends in Accident on I-40 in Garner

When Routine Traffic Stops Go Awry

Tragic North Carolina car accidents often attract the attention of police, investigators, and sometimes the news media and general public.

But “near-miss” accidents attract the attention of practically no one at all – save for the drivers whose hearts skipped a few beats as they contemplated what could have just happened.

Chances are, you’ve been involved in a few “near-miss” situations yourself. There is a lot that you can learn from these situations – information that could be useful for helping you and other drivers avoid injury accidents and improve driving skills.

Accidents Are Aberrations

Odds are that drivers experience far more “near misses” than they do actual accidents. Since we don’t pay attention to these near misses, they are less salient, and we may tend to discount their relevance. In fact, it’s not uncommon for drivers who’ve just “nearly missed” getting into serious collisions to forget about what happened by the time they arrive home or at their destination.

But these near misses may hold powerful clues about your driving behavior, attitudes, and weaknesses. By attending to them – identifying what happened, who was involved, how you went wrong (or right), etc. – you can shore up your most glaring weaknesses and inculcate new, better, and safer behaviors.

How to Do It

The key is to collect data.

Every time you’re involved in a “near-miss” accident — after you stop driving and are in a safe place — write down exactly what happened in as much detail as possible. Identify more information than you think is necessary – dates, who was involved, how you felt before and afterwards, what you think caused it, etc.

Likewise, journal any time after anything extraordinary happens on the road. As a general point, the more information you have about your driving – and the more specific that information is – the more good data you can mune to understand your driving habits.

Why do this? Isn’t it time consuming and annoying?

Perhaps. But car accidents are one of the biggest non-disease killers of North Carolinians. So it’s worth your time to pay attention to and prevent auto disasters.

For help understanding actionable, specific tactics and strategies you can use to hold someone accountable for what happened to you, connect with a North Carolina auto accident law firm right now.

More Web Resources:

“Near-miss” accidents

Using journaling to understand and change your behaviors